Saturday, April 25, 2009

THE AUSPICIOUS VISITATION

The fellow I'm house/cat-sitting for is getting famous for making kids smarter way earlier than any of us want them to be. He does this by making them hang out with bees. They love it. Mostly because they aren't real bees, but a very intuitive piece of software that enables young kids to grasp complex systems by walking them through how bees notify the hive about the location of nectar. The software is called Beesign and looks like this:

And this is a kid working on it.

Great stuff, and this old professor buddy of mine is getting known as the bee guy. I had the privilege of working on the artwork and naming the thing, but he gets all the press and super models after him.

SO, the day he was returning home, as I was getting ready to pick him up from the airport, I let Solomon outside for a few minutes. When I came back in, closed the door, and went into the kitchen, where the front door and living area is still visible, there was a new guest in the house - The Goddess of all Bees, the biggest *#%ing bee ever. I spent a good amount of time trying to get her safely under glass for these shots, then we chatted about that software, and she gave me a few tips to pass on, before I let her outside and she vanished into thin air.